Many companies have an interest in collecting and analyzing data gathered from remote sources. Those companies may have fleets of vehicles that they wish to monitor and direct, may have products out at remote location that they would like to gather information on and data from, such as vending machines, cell tower installations, etc. Their business may depend on retrieving and analyzing remote data such as traffic conditions, or weather conditions, or may have any other use for remotely collected data. There are manufacturers and distributors of equipment and sensors that allow those companies to have access to the desired data. In many instances, those manufacturers will deploy resources required to monitor and collect data from the remote sensors and may parse and analyze that data for the customer, providing the customer with reports to summarize the data of interest. In those cases, the service provider will store the company's raw data and provide access to the reports and data.
In many instances, this system is not ideal for the customer. For a variety of reasons, the customer may not want the data stored outside of the company network, as that data could be compromised, hacked or simply unavailable at times. At the same time, the company may not want a service provider to have the required access to continually update information on the company's servers and data centers, as would be required to continually monitor the information coming from the remote devices. Further the company may not have the analytical capabilities and technologies to parse and analyze the data to put it into a useful format.
What is required is a mechanism that is capable of receiving data from remote monitors or sensors and resides in the customer's network but is isolated from the rest of the company's network and equipment.